If you didn’t happen to see what happened Tuesday on the U.S. Senate floor [full video/transcript here] when Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) unleashed a stunning 38-minute speech excoriating the CIA for spying on U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence staffers’ work on a 6,300-page report detailing torture by the Bush-era CIA, you’ll want to listen to this week’s BradCast.
Even if you did see what happened on Tuesday, you should tune in to this week’s show, as I suspect you’ll get details on the various plots, cover-ups and related schemes that you haven’t yet heard. I was joined to discuss the mess with our old friend Marcy Wheeler, the encyclopedic national security expert from Emptywheel.net and now Senior Policy Adviser at The Intercept.
She’s been tracking this since at least 2009, and we went through the remarkable timeline beginning with Bush’s “Enhanced Interrogation” torture program just after 9/11, through the CIA’s attempted cover-up, shredding of videotapes and removal of documents from the Senate staffer’s computers, on up to yesterday’s explosive comments from DiFi and the implausible denials from CIA Chief John Brennan (and the calls for criminal charges by both parties) which Wheeler and others are now describing as a bona fide “Constitutional Crisis”.
This is an extraordinary story. It’s Spy v. Overseer; CIA v. U.S. Senate; Executive Branch v. Legislative Branch; DiFi v. Brennan; Hypocrisy v. Reality; Torture & Cover-ups v. Rule of Law & Constitution. And it all could, as Mother Jones’ David Corn argues, very well “undermine the basis for secret government” itself.
In the second part of the show, we covered several much more encouraging news items from the past several days, as well as the latest Green News Report. Buckle up and enjoy!
Download MP3 or listen online below…
[audio:http://bradblog.com/audio/BradCast_BradFriedman_MarcyWheeler_CIASenateSpying_031214.mp3]
I don’t get it. Who within the CIA (or former administration) is being protected. The general public, the “Panetta report” (within the CIA) and now the CIA’s cheerleader in the Senate is saying that enhanced interrogation is torture. Just when we might finally agree on this, the evidence disappears and we have to go back and “trust” the CIA about what they have done (and are continuing to do). There is a pattern developing that seems to end with more suspicion of the intelligence community but we are still supposed to trust them. Why can’t the Senate and others tell us who is behind this cover-up. Why do they get special hidden identity privileges. If they commit crimes, then like any other citizen they should be outed and scrutinized. If we can’t trust that the intelligence community is no longer working for the best interests of all of America (not just a select few), then they should not be so protected.
It could very well “undermine the basis for secret government” itself, but certainly it undermines democracy.
Democracy has a pillar called accountability, and when that pillar is gone so is democracy.
Congrats for the coverage on these major issues.
Certainly the reason that Nancy Pelosi wouldn’t investigate Bush/Cheney was because they threatened or bribed her in some way as well by the CIA. Pelosi’s investigation was about 8 years after the anthrax attack that had put upon democrats who had voted against the Patriot Act and was voted upon and passed after it looks like the same CIA thuggery too.
CDT @ 3:
FWIW, Pelosi had no actual say over what Congress did or didn’t investigate until 2007 when Dems finally took control of House. Criticize all ya like, but blaming her for the “8 years” thing is not particularly persuasive given the facts.
I think the real question to be asking is, will Feinstein ever get it? Or will she keep defending the security state’s right to conduct unconstitutional surveillance while squawking about CIA obstruction and prevention of oversight because her imperial territory was violated? Sadly, I don’t think she will even though this *should* have hit her over the head like an anvil that abuse of power by the security state whether against congress or the people is equally egregious and inextricably related.